Archive for the 'Presentation' Category

Do you blog or update Facebook whenever you find a bad user interface? Consider posting on the HFIDO blog! This is a great way to share your thoughts with the greater HFIDO, Bentley and UX communities. Also, we want to show that HFIDers know a thing or two about UX

We are looking for students to post about:

Interesting insights on interfaces you experienced or worked on

UX book reviews

Experiences with events like conferences, hackathons, design jams, and etc.

Anything you want to share with HFIDO!

Also, we are still looking for student accomplishments for our Student Spotlight posts. Accomplishments can include publications, presentations, book reviews, awards, and other significant contributions.

Please contact Kathy Dang to post for the blog or to nominate someone for a Student Spotlight.

HFIDO is made up of very talented and accomplished members and the HFIDO board wants to recognize YOU on our blog! We are looking for portfolios, publications, book reviews, experiences with hackathons, startup weekend projects you’d like to share, or interesting insights you’ve gained in the UX field, etc.

“When users land on your website, they typically read the content available. Then, the next thing that they will do is to try and familiarize themselves with your website. Most of the time this involves looking for navigation.” Read the full story on Smashing Magazine.

“When you do a lot of writing, you’ll end up with lots of ideas and articles at various stages, including your idea lists, articles you’ve just started writing, halfway-finished articles, completed drafts that you need to review, final versions you’re waiting to publish, and articles that have already been published. It’s hard to keep track of all these pieces without good organization.” Learn more at UXmatters.

Survey design is important because it affects response rate (item and unit) and data quality (introduce bias), which, in turn, affects survey results. As someone who might work directly or tangentially with a market research, or embark on your own research, this presentation will help you think about survey design issues and improve surveys you encounter, as well as give some guidelines and resources. These will be set within the cognitive response model of question comprehension, information retrieval, judgment in responding to a question, and providing a response. Learn more about Miriam Gerver Donath. This event will be recorded and can be attended remotely via Centra.

UPDATE: Thank you to all who attended and, especially, to our wonderful presenters from Perkins. If you weren’t able to make it, you can view the recording in your browser (it runs about 90 minutes).

“Accessibility in a Not-So-Accessible World” – Wed., 10/10 at 7:30 PM in Smith 122 or online

Presented by Perkins School for the Blind representatives – Kim Charlson, Director of the Braille and Talking Book Library, and Jim Denham, Director of the Assistive Technology Program – information and experiences will be shared to inform participants of the challenges and potential solutions for consumers with visual impairment. Current technology and real life anecdotes will both be reviewed.

“A few years back, we decided to try something new. A potential client approached us and rather than preparing another project proposal, we offered the client what we now call a ‘Project Evaluation’. We charged them a fixed price for which we promised to evaluate the project, in all of our areas of expertise, and give them our recommendations.

That project became a game changer for us, starting an on-going relationship that opened doors into a new market. It was the process of the evaluation itself that brought the new market potential to our attention, and gave us the opportunity to develop this business model. It was a definite win, and one that a project proposal couldn’t have delivered.”

An Experience Research Director at Mad*Pow, Dan received his BA in Psychology from Brandeis University, spent seven years supporting hard-to-use interfaces at a cable technology firm, jumped into the world of usability through the MBA and MS in Human Factors in Information Design program at Bentley University, and then spent his first two years in the field at a digital marketing agency building a usability research practice and investigating neuromarketing techniques.

View presentation!UPA Boston, February Meeting – Wed., 2/1, 6-9 pm @ One to One in Charlestown
A multidisciplinary panel from digital marketing agency One to One, “Mobile Mantras: An Experience Design Roundtable” discusses current experience design best practices for mobile development.

RSVP here.Networking, Knowledge Sharing, and UX Methods – Wed., 2/8, 5-8 pm @ MathWorks in Natick
The MathWorks Usability Group invites you to spend the evening with a lively group of UX pros for knowledge sharing and networking. We’ll have short talks and displays to share research, design methods, and practices. You’ll have the opportunity to meet MathWorks UX team members as well as other regional UX professionals. We’ll also have lots of delicious food available, so come hungry!

People make up their minds about you in the first 30 seconds of meeting you. Here’s the kicker: it’s an unconscious decision. They’ve already decided how they feel about you, but they just don’t know it yet.

Most people get nervous delivering speeches. Even thinking about delivering speeches makes people sweat. Unfortunately, they unconsciously communicate that nervousness to the audience, and the audience reads it as an attack, again unconsciously.

Once an audience believes it’s under attack, it stops listening and prepares (unconsciously) for flight.

Most presentations fail because the speaker presents information to the audience in a way that unintentionally ensures it will be instantly forgotten. Here is the surprising alternative: by changing a few sentences at the beginning of your talk, you can increase audience retention by four or five-fold.

To increase your charisma, focus on a single emotion that you feel about your content or the person you’re meeting, for three minutes before the beginning of your meeting, speech, or presentation.

BONUS! People believe non-verbal communication over verbal communication every time.

Learn more communication theory from Dr. Nick Morgan via his blog and videos.

“The 2011 Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA) International Conference took place from June 21 through June 24, 2011. The conference lived up to its theme, “Designing for Social Change”, and heralded the 20th anniversary of the UPA Conference. Approximately 600 experienced and novice usability, user experience, and user interface design professionals gathered at the Hyatt Regency, in Atlanta, GA. This was my first UPA Conference, and I was fortunate to be an on-site volunteer. My expectations for this conference mirrored my experience of the many other conferences I’ve attended in the past, but this conference wildly exceeded my expectations. There were ample networking opportunities, education in usability, interaction with experienced professionals, and a glimpse of the disciplines’ future.”

UPA 2012 will be in Las Vegas, from June 5th to 8th – read the full article on UXmatters.

Three Bentley MSHFID students – Diego Mendes, Amanda Davis, and Vignesh Krubai – will be presenting for World Usability Day 2011 on Thursday, November 10 from 6-9 p.m at Microsoft NERD Center (1 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA 02138).

The presentation, titled “The User Experience of Interactive Educational Systems: An iPad Study”, details their new technique for data collection in a usability study, as well as the qualitative findings from their research.

Chris Haas has announced the speaker roster for this year’s UPA Boston event on May 25th.. There are a lot of HFID-affiliated folks on the list! Congratulations to those current and former HFID students on the panel.